New Spring Design

Time to break out of your RSS readers: there’s a new design on Ma.tt! Recommended only for the high-bandwidth and the open-minded. There was nothing wrong with my old theme, I just get an itch for something new every now and then and wanted a totally different direction — especially now that every site has copped the worn paper look / colorful flourish. Also it’s refreshing to be able to have a design where the only person in the world it needs to please is me. Here’s a before and after:

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For fans of the old design, I’m going to abstract it into a regular WordPress theme — gallery features and all — that will be available to the entire world, including WordPress.com. It’s amazing to me how many great designs are thrown away, never to be used again, when as a WP theme they could live forever.

I wanted to thank Julien Morel, the creative mind behind this iteration, and Brian Colinger, who turned the vision into HTML, CSS, and PHP.

If I could I would redesign the site every season: Winter, Spring, Summer, Fall. It just always takes longer than I planned (this was supposed to launch in Winter). The cobbler’s sons go shoeless.

I ended up deciding against it because the coffee stain one was too personal, as is this one. It wasn’t broad enough to apply to a wider audience that didn’t exactly match my tastes. The last one, though, I think could be a pretty neat general theme.

I can see where you are coming from on the coffee stain theme. Can you give everyone an ETA on the the old one being released? One thing i always missed on here was flickr…you have the pro account, why not integrate it?

I couldn’t agree more, Matt. The sizes are a little too constricting… but well, their sharpening algorithm rocks my socks! 🙂 never seen better ones (care to enlighten me if you have seen more awesome examples, heh)

Back to the design itself, well done Matt! I particularly adore the gently striped background – visually stimulating but doesn’t scream of attention (which will divert people’s attention away).

Awesome header you have over there! Although I miss the cellophane stickers that hold the photos up, the gallery is still looking great!

I’m loving the new design Matt. I was extremely impressed with the old one, so to hear you’ll port it over to the rest of the community is awesome. Any guess on when it will become available or how you’ll let people know it is available? I’ve got an itchy design finger that I’d like to try out on that layout 🙂

I’m looking it at 1024, and at that resolution it has some problems in header and footer: the images are a little cut on the sides.
When I resize the window at more than 1024 it’s ok… and quite cool. 🙂

Sweet design, Matt, I’ve always liked your mix of “handwriting”, cut paper and digital layout elements. The photo treatment on this layout is very cool. Surprised you’ve had time to even oversee a new layout what with all the time you’ve been spending on planes this year! Keep the hits coming. Thanks for a great set of products.

Okay, the design is beautiful but one thing is bugging me out: I’m on a 15″ laptop with a 1400*900 screen resolution and I have to scroll an entire viewport down to get to the content. The header is just way too high…

Yeah, I agree with Van Der Sype. The entire view port gets covered with the masthead and I have to scroll down to see the content. Maybe you could use some nifty javascript that auto scrolls to content area depending on the size of the viewport. This way the user gets to see the masthead and then automattically see the content too.

I’m glad that I read all the comments, because I almost missed the Hedra Ivy and the piano keys to birds at the bottom.
I see that the W @ the bottom is even aged a bit – when do we get the updated stickers? Speaking of, any preview on the swag for SxSW? 😀

1. I am conflicted on whether I like the header and how much space it takes up. On first (and maybe second, third ..) viewing it is mightily impressive but may end up becoming a bothersome impediment to being able to dive right into the content. It’s friggin’ beautiful, though. Like I said, conflicted.

2. Those diagonal lines are giving me headache when I attempt to read your copy. Maybe a subtle but effective fade as the lines meet the copy would be good. Keeps the design element but adds readability. It’s all about compromises.

I’m a real big fan of WordPress. I use it for ALL of my blogs, including my most popular one – a celebrity gossip blog. But anyway, this layout is SICK! Maybe the best layout I’ve seen in a while, no joke. And I’m subscribed to a lot of CSS galleries, so I’ve seen tons of website layouts over the years.

Awesome job – did you use Typepad or Squarespace for this? It can’t possibly have been done with WordPress. Seriously – how can anyone ever possibly use anything other than WordPress. Very Inspiring design – especially the use of diagonals and the custom navigation.

In a good way, I can’t stop looking at the new blog design, it’s just FANTASTIC! The header, yes it’s bigger than most, is superb and suits the blog well! 😀 Talk about a better design than the last one, don’t get me wrong, I just much prefer this new design over the old one!

Speaking of which though, I’m looking forward to you releasing that design. Cause I plan on going through the code, most likely more than once, seeing just exactly how you did certain things here and there!

…It’s nice to see the trend continuing in the new design when it comes to the Asides, and Photo posts! That I do look forward on finding out how you’re done it all, us PHP newbies need to learn how things are done from some you know! LOL

Julien, along with Brian, did a great job designing and styling the new look. I don’t think I’ll EVER get tired of this look, it puts a smile on my face when I look at it!

gorgeous, matt. your designs always raise the bar on blog themes, and are always an inspiration. i look forward to the release of the last design.

oh, and i love how effing big the header is. it’s perfect — because that art could be hung in a gallery more than topping a blog, so it needs to be taken in on its own, and i love the fact that it breaks the “above the fold” rule (are there many “rules” this theme doesn’t break? i guess it still scrolls vertically — you need a horizontally scrolling blog next time!).

Personally I don’t mind the width of the site, it’s a personal site, and I imagine a lot of your actual visitors have decent sized monitors themselves.

I absolutely love the header, great attention to detail! Scrolling down though, I get the feeling that attention gets a bit lost; the backgrounds there don’t seem to match the quality and feel of the initial view of the header.

The same goes for the typography, it doesn’t seem to fit in with the header and footer, style, and also size-wise. As much attention as some of the graphics are attracting, the copy itself gets a bit lost being quite low on size and contrast.

Your designs has always inspired me, Depending on what site I’ve been creating for.

But you sid what I loved to hear…That this design is for you and what you like. I think that is what a blog needs to be designed for! The person it belongs to. It’s time to change the design on my personalblog as well…it still has a christmastree on it!!!